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While Your PSN Trophies Are Safe, New York Times Says Your Credit Card Info May Not Be
It's always better to start with the good news, right? I've been asking Sony for several days (and getting no response) about whether cloud-based game saves and PlayStation Network trophies would still exist when the service comes back online (hopefully) next week.
Last night, the company addressed it.
Sony senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold posted yet another question-and-answer session on the PlayStation Blog, addressing many of these inquiries.
Seybold says trophies will be re-synced properly upon PSN's return, history/friends list/settings are intact, and cloud saves will not disappear. Of course, everyone will remain curious until PSN is back.
Oh, right. The bad news. The New York Times cites several security researchers who have noticed chatter on hacker forums that a database featuring personal data and credit card information for 2.2 million individuals has been shopped around. Reportedly, Sony was even offered a chance to buy it.
== TEASER == Seybold told the NYT he was unaware of any such deal proposed to Sony, but even today, the company still cannot one-hundred-percent guarantee your credit card details were not accessed.
Here's a huge caveat, too: there's no way to verify the database is real. No one has actually seen it.
Caveats and uncertainty are not a way to build confidence with consumers. The drama continues.
It's always better to start with the good news, right? I've been asking Sony for several days (and getting no response) about whether cloud-based game saves and PlayStation Network trophies would still exist when the service comes back online (hopefully) next week.
Last night, the company addressed it.
Sony senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold posted yet another question-and-answer session on the PlayStation Blog, addressing many of these inquiries.
Seybold says trophies will be re-synced properly upon PSN's return, history/friends list/settings are intact, and cloud saves will not disappear. Of course, everyone will remain curious until PSN is back.
Oh, right. The bad news. The New York Times cites several security researchers who have noticed chatter on hacker forums that a database featuring personal data and credit card information for 2.2 million individuals has been shopped around. Reportedly, Sony was even offered a chance to buy it.
== TEASER == Seybold told the NYT he was unaware of any such deal proposed to Sony, but even today, the company still cannot one-hundred-percent guarantee your credit card details were not accessed.
Here's a huge caveat, too: there's no way to verify the database is real. No one has actually seen it.
Caveats and uncertainty are not a way to build confidence with consumers. The drama continues.
" Does the PSN store have other options to buy content on it, like points or paypal? "Yep, you can buy point cards at stores.
There's been a few posts on reddit and a few on the forum here about people seeing and getting calls about unathorized charges. Can't really confirm whether they're truthful or not, but people on PSN might just want to get new cards before you have to deal with false charges and identify theft. It's not your fault, but the ensuing credit hit that comes with everything is just so much trouble that it's better to be pre-emptive about it.
i am less interested in the continued developments (the damage has been done) but i am incredibly curious as to how Sony is going to win back its users.
What an absolute mess! If (and that's a rather large if) Sony can get over this, will they even be able to gain customers trust again. I agree with those that recommend using PSN cards from now on.
It's fake, the hackers even claimed to have the ccv2 code of the credit cards despite that PSN doesn't request such information.
The way Sony is handling this is beyond disgusting. Quit telling us what you don't know and start telling us what you do know Sony.
I'm pissed off as hell right now.
Tickets for Phish at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago go on sale tomorrow morning. This concert is going to sell out within minutes, but because of Sony I had to call and cancel my credit card on Wednesday and was told that I would not receive a new one until one or two weeks from now.
Sony better either pony up and buy me some Phish tickets or somehow be able to repay me for the fact that I am going to be missing the only vacation I was going to have a chance to go on this year. I don't even know how you put a monetary value on something like that, but Sony better find a way to make this up to us. If I have to dish out $500 a piece for scalper tickets than Sony better be covering that cost for me as well. 2 weeks without my credit card is going to put a serious strain on my bank account, and now it's causing me to miss the closest Phish shows to me and hence means that I probably won't even be able to see them this summer.
The database sale sounds like a hoax, or someone trying to cash in on the hysteria. Still, the bad press keeps rolling out and Sony has done little except make a few blog posts. It's a bush league reaction, and they are going to pay for it in public perception.
I think all the news organizations need to take a pill and stop trying to get readers through hype. Because every time anyone says anything about this thing it explodes. I think everyone needs to do some fact checking before they go off half cocked and report things. Oh yeah, that would be responsible, no one does that anymore.
Ohh Sony... I almost feel bad, until i remember it was their own shitty infrastructure which lead to all this.
" The way Sony is handling this is beyond disgusting. Quit telling us what you don't know and start telling us what you do know Sony. I'm pissed off as hell right now. Tickets for Phish at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago go on sale tomorrow morning. This concert is going to sell out within minutes, but because of Sony I had to call and cancel my credit card on Wednesday and was told that I would not receive a new one until one or two weeks from now. Sony better either pony up and buy me some Phish tickets or somehow be able to repay me for the fact that I am going to be missing the only vacation I was going to have a chance to go on this year. I don't even know how you put a monetary value on something like that, but Sony better find a way to make this up to us. If I have to dish out $500 a piece for scalper tickets than Sony better be covering that cost for me as well. 2 weeks without my credit card is going to put a serious strain on my bank account, and now it's causing me to miss the closest Phish shows to me and hence means that I probably won't even be able to see them this summer. "If you buy scalper tickets it is your own fault, as for not having your credit card putting strain on your bank account I also don't understand that. You're spending money you don't have, when that CC bill arrives that strain is already there just postponed. Unless you do make up the money rapidly enough, perhaps you should budget better?
I want to laugh at your ridiculous post, but I'm afraid you will decided to blame me as well and start demanding I buy you tickets as well.
As much as I know that no network is truly safe, I have to believe that a large part of the cost of Xbox Live (which many gamers love to knock on) is only notable in the things that don't happen to it. It could have little to do with it, but this may be an unfortunate case of getting what you pay for in regards to PSN.
The people shilling the 2.2 million CC database are supposedly saying the data comes with CVV2s as well, something that was never collected by Sony. Not that people shouldn't continue to be on alert for fraud, but I call BS on this claim that these cards are from PSN users. It's just brilliant dishonest marketing tactics coming out of a community of thieves targeted at idiots eager to spend money buying card numbers from a very high profile breach.
It's funny watching you jump from PSN news article, to PSN news article with your unwarranted hysteria. Honestly, your knee-jerk reactions to this are what is hurting you the most, and I wonder how many other people are reacting in the same ridiculous manner. Probably a lot.
Personally, I haven't reacted to this PSN stuff in any way whatsoever. I had my credit card number, and personal information typed into my PSN account just like a lot of other people, yet I haven't done anything about it. I haven't cancelled my credit card. I've done nothing. I might at some point, if I notice any fishy activity, but I'm pretty confident that nothing is going to happen to me. Which is why I've done nothing.
See how that works? A potentially bad situation comes around, and instead of flipping out about it, and immediately taking action, I'm calmly observing before I react. Because of that, this whole situation has been a minor nuisance to me. Nothing more.
In fact, people like you in these comment threads are more annoying than this entire PSN debacle. There is a reason why a ton of people are replying to your comments, telling you that you are being a moron, and basically laughing at you...
I think Patrick Klepick's latest tweet is pretty dead on. He linked this article. For real. Most of you people that are posting in these PSN news threads are acting absurd.
well, I think the safest way to do a sony transaction now is with the game cards. this credit card thing is too much.
If this goes bad, this could be really really bad for the video games industry as a whole.
I suddenly don't mind Nintendo asking me for my stuff everytime I buy something.
" I've said this numerous times before, but it bears repeating. if your credit card information was among those affected, call your card company now and have them issue you a new one. The worst case scenario is that you'll be without an active credit card for about a week. "This is the smartest post here...instead of bitching and worrying, go cancel cards, wait the week to get a new number. They don;t have your social insurance number...call your banks, find out what you can do...this is always possible on the net, whether it be Sony or Amazon or EBay, protect yourself...change ALL passwords as well if they match the one you used on PSN.
Damnit Sony. You OWE your customers more then this. You NEED to be open on every single nitty gritty detail of this calamity. Way to drag your own name through the dirt. Even if this "database turns out to be fake, you need to let us know so that we can take steps to prevent identity theft.
" The database claims to contain Security Numbers for the cards. Which Sony doesn't store.this seems to be the big thing people are missing when reporting the story."
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